Summer vacation for kids is quite different than summer “vacation” for parents.

It’s summertime, my four kids are out of school, and my writing productivity has gone down the crapper.
Instead of screaming at my kids for what seem like endless periods of time for interrupting me every five minutes over life-changing things such as “She’s looking at me” and “He’s in my room”, I decided to buff and polish my social media in hopes to get it ready for a big revamp come the fall. To help me do this, I decided to do some research and found I’ve been sucked into the time-suck that is Pinterest.
For those of you who’ve never experienced working with Pinterest, know it’s you making virtual bulletin boards for those things you want to keep and look at later. This should help replace that ginormous stack of magazine articles you keep thinking you’ll read later, but end up not knowing where they are. It can also be a great place to store those photos you want to keep, but don’t want to use up computer space.I’ve had friends who use it to help connect readers, show them what images go through their minds as they create the story.

But it doesn’t have to be just for your story. There are endless things to see.Make-up tips.Traveling Ideas.Health articles.Writing ideas and craft articles.
Weird pets.
People doing really stupid stuff.Recipes you’ll never use.Craft ideas…HAHAHAHAHAHAHA…sorry, I had to laugh at that one. I’ll NEVER use those, but I do look more well-rounded if I have a board for them.
And most importantly, endless photos of hot actors/actresses (for research purposes only) are all there.
All you have to do is CLICK and PIN to whatever board you create.
It’s addictive, but what I have found it’s a great way to cut through writer’s block. Plus, it’s been a great way to help me feel like I’m doing something when nothing creatively is happening while my kids are on summer break.
These different bits of information are great to absorb since they are shorter time commitments and (usually) offer some pretty good suggestions. And yes, there’s a free app, which is nice when I’m trapped in a car for hours of a road trip.
Also, it’s easy to navigate and I can work without much brainpower, which makes it easy to do when I have a whole lot of distractions.
I find them as my husband and I are catching up with episodes of Arrow (**swoon**) or my kids don’t need anything from me for about five minutes.
What started as a time suck as moved into me gathering information about social media, website building, settings for my stories, small useless bits of informations I could put in a work-in-progress, and more exercises for banishing jiggly arms than I could ever find if I’d done a general web search.
Plus, I have seen a HUGE surge in people getting interested in my boards. Yesterday, my email notifications reported in the past twenty-four hours, I had over one-hundred people either re-pin something I’d grabbed or started following one or all of my boards.
That’s slowly translating over to my sales, which in the end, is what I wanted in the first place. So, I even though what started as something to do when I had little time, turned into a pretty good social media move.
Now, back to that Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup trifle recipe. I have a feeling it’s never going to make it to the bowl since the supplies are rapidly shrinking.
I mean, it’s hard to wrestle four kids away from a large bag of Reese’s, but it might give me a few minutes more on this board about Karl Urban–it’s for research purposes only, of course.